26. Charlotte

26

CHARLOTTE

T he next morning, the sunlight streaming into the cabin is what wakes us. It's chilly when I throw back the blankets, cutting through my thin t-shirt, and I wrap my arms over my chest, feeling suddenly exposed. Ivan is sitting up, too, running his hands through his still-bloodied hair as he blinks away sleep, and something about the way his face is still soft and vulnerable in this in-between moment makes me want to get up and go to him.

It reminds me of Ivan before all of this. The man I thought I knew. The one I was falling for.

Aren't you falling for this one, too ?

I shove the thought away, getting up to go and get a granola bar and bottle of water from the pile of our supplies on the table. The moment my feet hit the floor, and I straighten up fully, I let out a moan of pain, clenching my teeth against the bone-deep soreness.

Ivan is up in an instant, so quickly that I don't even see him coming towards me at first. I'm too focused on how fucking bad I feel.

"Charlotte?" His voice is strained, panicked. "Are you alright?"

"Yes," I bite out the word, swallowing hard as I try to force myself to move. "I'm just really, really fucking sore. I've done Pilates classes with Sarah, and I've still never been this sore."

Ivan lets out a sharp, startled bark of laughter at that, but all I feel is a sudden hollowness in my chest, a new kind of pain to add to the physical one. Because there won't be any more Pilates classes with Sarah, or sitting in the sauna afterward, or groaning over the pain together as we use the foam rollers to work out the leftover kinks. There's only an unknown, empty future in front of me.

Will I find another Sarah? Another friend to work out with? Someone else to share my days with that I'll be happy to know, who will make me glad that it all turned out like this? Another Jaz for happy hours? Another Zoe to shop with? The thought feels like a betrayal, and hot tears spring to my eyes out of seemingly nowhere, a weight crushing my chest.

"Hey." Concern laces Ivan's voice, and he reaches out to me, but I don't want any part of it right now. I brush past him, hobbling stiffly to the table as I snatch up a chocolate chip granola bar and angrily twist the top off of a bottle of water.

I would give anything for a hot shower right now. My muscles feel as if my body is one big cramp, and my head hurts. Ivan doesn't look much better—his forehead is bruised around the gash, and I'm sure the bruises scattered across his torso are livid. I can see the ones on my forearms, the scratches on my right arm still angry.

I took care of him last night. But right now, I don't even want to talk to him. I never used to be this moody, this mercurial. But I suppose, under the circumstances, it can be excused.

Ivan swallows hard, looking at me for a long moment before he swipes a couple of the bottles off of the table. "I'm going to go wash up outside," he says finally. "We need to leave in thirty minutes or so, tops."

The forest looks different this morning as we drive through it, back out to the road. Last night, it was dark and frightening, closing in around us as we exhaustedly made our way to the safety cabin. Now, in the light, it looks beautiful. Open. Free.

Maybe I'll go somewhere like this, after, I think. The mountains. Colorado. Somewhere completely different from where I've lived my whole life. After all, I'll be starting from a blank slate. I might as well do it all completely fresh.

It's worth considering, but it doesn't bring me any joy. My heart feels heavy as Ivan pulls back out onto the highway, and I sink back into the passenger's seat, trying not to think about how much pain I'm in.

"We're going to have to dump this car soon," Ivan says, watching the road. "Tonight, probably. I'll do what I did before—find some shitty small car lot and swap out a pair of license plates. Tomorrow we'll be in Vegas, and we'll get rid of that car. Then we'll be home free not long after."

I nod. I don't trust myself to speak right now. I shuffle through one of the bags that I repacked earlier for more pain medication, chasing it with water. I'm exhausted still, and the reality of stealing yet another car, of the fact that we're still being hunted by the FBI and the Bratva—all of it makes me feel an onslaught of emotions that I don't feel prepared to handle right now.

The Bratva want Ivan dead, and me dead or used to turn a profit for them. The FBI want to throw Ivan in the darkest hole available, and at this point, I'm pretty sure they would put me in prison too, if I didn't give them everything they want to know about Ivan. And while I should be willing to roll over on Ivan after everything he's put me through—I don't know if I would be.

For better or worse, I care about him. And that kind of betrayal feels wrong.

The miles pass by silently. I watch the forested landscape give way to open fields, the warmth of the car finally lulling me back to sleep for a little while. I'm dragged out of my half-nap by Ivan's voice, telling me that we should stop soon.

"We need fuel, and we should get something to eat," he says. "Probably should stretch our legs, too. After what happened, sitting for so long without moving isn't great."

I nod, not wanting to think about how it's going to feel when I finally get up and move. I can feel that everything has started to tighten up as I've been sitting and napping, and I'm sure it's not going to be good.

I wander through the gas station as Ivan gets something to drink and pays for gas, looking for snacks I might want. I feel stiff and sore, and walking around is both painful and helping all at once. Glancing at a calendar on one wall near the window, I realize it's only a few days until Halloween.

My chest tightens. Jaz, Zoe, and Sarah will have decided on costumes for this year by now. Decided which bar's party would be the best one to go to, or if they want to bar-hop downtown, seeing how many costume contests they can enter and how many free drinks they can get. I'm going to miss it this year.

And every other year, forever.

I grab a small bag of Cheetos and a bottle of Snapple tea, not really paying attention to what flavor. My interest in snacks has fled, at this point. As I approach the counter to set my purchases down next to Ivan's, I see a rack of postcards next to the register, and something about them makes the melancholy feeling settling over me feel even heavier.

They're all cheesy: overblown photos of landscapes and big slogans, announcing our departure from the Great Plains and our impending entrance into the Pacific Northwest—technically. But, of course, rather than continuing on to the coast, we're taking a sharp turn and heading down to Vegas. A lump rises in my throat as I look at them, realizing that there's no one for me to send one to now. If I did—if I reach out to any of my friends or the family I haven't really spoken to all that much in the last several years—I'd be putting them in danger.

Ivan pays for the food, and gas for the car. I can tell that he's being careful not to look as if he's scanning the parking lot, but I can see him watching out of the corner of his eye, see the tension in his shoulders as he waits for something to happen. For there to be another incident, now that it's a new day.

But this time, at least, it's fine. We make it back to the car without anyone cropping up that we don't want to see. Ivan fills the tank and gets back in, glancing over at me as I lean back against my seat with a groan. The pain meds that I took are starting to kick in, but it was just a combination of ibuprofen and naproxen, so it doesn't do much more than take the edge off. My body is still protesting every movement.

Ivan glances over at me as he begins to pull out of the gas station, his face etched with concern.

"Do you need to take a longer break?" he asks softly. "We can, if you need to. I'll find somewhere safe for us to stop?—"

"No." I shake my head. "Let's just keep going. The sooner we get to Vegas, the better."

I know I'm not imagining the hurt in his face when I say that. He keeps his gaze fixed on the road ahead, and the silence between us feels heavier than ever, full of unspoken things that I don't know if we're ever going to actually say to each other.

What's the point, when whatever this is comes to an end in just a couple of days?

We drive for hours, only stopping a couple more times for brief bathroom breaks. The silence goes on for nearly as long, broken only by the low hum of the radio and the occasional rustle of a snack wrapper or crackle of a plastic water bottle. At this point, I don't know which of us should be the one to try to bridge the chasm between us. Ivan hurt me in ways that should be unforgivable, that should have broken the trust between us forever, but I know I've hurt him, too. He's been making himself vulnerable to me, trying to make up for what he's done, and I won't let it be enough.

I don't know if I can.

As the sunset starts to streak the sky, lighting it up in a painter's palette's worth of oranges and yellows and pinks, I try to focus on that, instead of the ache in my muscles and in my heart. All too soon, Ivan's voice, flat and toneless, cuts through my distraction. "I'm going to stop and swap the car out soon," he says, shifting lanes as he glances down at the atlas in his lap. "It'll be the last time before we get to Vegas."

He says it almost reassuringly, as if to make it up to me that we have to steal another car. Just one more. But honestly, at this point, after watching one of Ivan's brothers die in front of me, stealing a car seems less horrible than it did at first.

I nod, still not trusting myself to speak, still too tired to think of what to say. As the sunset fades and the sky starts to darken, Ivan pulls off of the highway, following a side road towards another small town.

He stops at a used car lot, much like the one we stole that first car from, dimly lit and deserted at the late hour. I feel a tightness in my chest as Ivan pulls the Subaru around back, out of sight of the road, his gaze quickly surveying the line of cars parked in the back of the lot.

The first time he did this, I was scared, and shocked. Now I just feel numb as I watch him expertly swap out plates on a Ford Bronco and a Honda Civic, moving at an abrupt pace as he glances over his shoulder, watching for anyone else.

I know the routine now, too. I get into the driver's seat of the car we've been driving as Ivan hotwires the Bronco, thinking of the list of crimes that Bradley will gleefully list off to me if we get caught. Grand theft auto. Accomplice to murder. Accomplice to carjacking. Grand theft auto again. The threats, the things he'll make me do in order to avoid a prison sentence. Things that I have no idea how I'll respond to, because until very recently, it never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that I would have to worry about any of this.

I follow Ivan out of the town, until we've passed the last of the stoplights, and the road darkens again. He takes me down a few side roads, out to an area where there's nothing but empty property, and turns off of the road, driving through a field all the way to a copse of trees.

When I stop just behind him, every muscle protesting the bouncing of the car the whole way, he gets out of the Bronco and walks over to the driver's side of the car I'm driving. He opens the door, gesturing for me to slip out.

"I'm going to wipe it down," he says. "Get rid of any fingerprints. Then we'll get on the road again."

I nod tiredly, jumping down out of the car and walking stiffly to the Bronco. I close my eyes while I'm waiting for Ivan to come back, and before I know it, I'm fast asleep.